Everyone in Washington is eagerly awaiting the Benchmarks Report.

One senior administration official told CNN the benchmarks report "will present a picture of satisfactory progress on some benchmarks and not on others. This is to be expected, given the report is a preliminary snapshot of what are the early stages of the full 'surge'."

So we're just at the very very beginning, the first day of the honeymoon, as it were, with the surge still green and moist, no more than a whisper, a kind of teaser of the things to come, maybe. Can't say yet—no one knows where we're going with this thing, could go here, could go there, everything's up for grabs. It's a bit early to talk about Nobel prizes, but you know what's funny? People who cry off even before we have any idea at all of the full surge. You've heard about the surge, people have talked about it, but until you've seen its benchmarks—whatever form they may take—then it's idle to comment.

In the world of science, we know that physicists commonly measure surges using benchmarks. What is perhaps less well-known is that benchmarks are really the only reliable measure of surges.

It is commonly thought that Leibniz was the first to elaborate the concept of benchmarks, though of course there were no surges to be measured at that time. His work did, however, give rise to the popular use of the term.

According to the Library of Congress, Benchmarks is the twenty-fifth most common title for slim volumes of poetry, right after Soundings and Landmarks.

Labels: CNN, Principia surrectionum